What will be the biggest technology changes of the next 10 years?

We live in exciting times. The technological improvements of the Internet Era have rapidly accelerated and compounded to create unprecedented capabilities for a more fully connected world. When we look into the future, the next 10 years are likely to bring some astonishing technological advances that our grandparents could not have imagined.

Singularity University recently published a list of transformative technology changes that we're likely to see by 2025. According to Singularity University and other sources, here are a few of the biggest tech trends of the next 10 years, as predicted by futurists and tech prognosticators:

For example:

Driverless cars: Driverless car technology has the potential to transform human transportation, reshape the economy, and save millions of lives that are currently lost to car crashes. We might be getting closer than most people would imagine to seeing driverless cars as an everyday reality – Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk was recently interviewed as saying that he believes driverless car technology for Tesla cars will be ready in as little as two years. Tesla vehicles already have “autopilot mode” for certain driving situations, but the cars are not yet fully autonomous. But it could happen as soon as 2017!

8 billion Internet-connected human beings: More people than ever before are getting access to the Internet – and that sounds like a mundane achievement, but it's actually a transformative one. According to Singularity University, a variety of organizations are working on plans to provide high speed Internet connectivity (more than one megabit per second) to five billion additional people. And with all these new Internet users comes significant human potential for creativity and problem solving. The Internet, at its best, is a way of magnifying human brainpower and expanding human consciousness. Going from 3 billion to 8 billion Internet users is going to be, on the whole, an overwhelmingly positive force for change in the world.

The "Internet of Everything:" You've heard of the Internet of Things, with Internet connected devices providing data and insights, but what about the “Internet of Everything?” in the next 10 years, we will have more than 100 billion connected devices worldwide, collecting data and generating $19 trillion of new economic value. The Internet of Everything will give people unprecedented data and decision-making power in every part of everyday life – in ways that most people have barely begun to comprehend.

Smarter AI to help us with health care: Health care is the next frontier in the information revolution. With wearable devices for biometric sensing and AI to help us make smarter choices about diet and exercise, everyone will have the power to be, as Singularity University puts it, “the CEOs of our own health.” Also look for amazing new advances in robotics for surgery, and lab-grown organs for transplants. The next 10 years could see the rise of lifesaving technology that was previously the stuff of science fiction.

Blockchain technology: The blockchain is an underrated and not widely-known form of secure protocol that makes it possible for people to send secure, encrypted, seamless transmission of assets and value (money, stocks, intellectual property, etc.), with no middleman. Although blockchain is mostly known as the technology behind the Bitcoin currency, it has many other applications as well. Tech investors like Marc Andreessen believe that that the blockchain is, as described in Singularity University, “as important of an opportunity as the creation of the Internet itself.”

Clearly we are on the cusp of some fascinating new technological developments that might make everyday life look very different for people in 2025 than it is today. Are you ready to get in a driverless car to ride to your robot surgeon appointment? Are you ready to expand your brainpower and connect with new friends, customers, colleagues and fans all over the world? All of these things are coming our way in the next 10 years as we move toward an ever-more connected world.